NARCO NEWS TO SUSPEND PUBLISHING INDEFINITELY ON OCTOBER 18 In memoriam: Carlos Sanchez Lopez (1954-2003) Narco News regrets to inform our readers that your trilingual online newspaper will suspend publishing new reports on October 18, three-and-a-half years after we began reporting on the drug war and democracy from Latin America. The suspension will be indefinite, it may be permanent, but the suspension will last at least until the New Year. We thank our readers and supporters who have helped to keep Narco News publishing non-stop since April 18, 2000. [continues 1162 words]
Sao Paulo Newspaper Claims that Marijuana Causes "Insomnia, Nausea, Muscular Pain," and "Loss of Appetite" RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL: As the country of Brazil moves closer to more humane and democratic drug policy, the vested interests - led by the "drug treatment" lobby - are trying desperately to pull it back to the Stone Age. The spear used by these Neanderthals of drug policy comes in the form of knowingly false statements about marijuana users and efforts to corral them into "treatment." Even as hundreds of drug war critics met in Rio de Janeiro at the event co-sponsored by Narco News last Friday, a U.S. government-funded advocate of "marijuana treatment" had arrived in Sao Paulo to promote his fledgling industry: "Treatment" for marijuana smokers. [continues 2443 words]
From a Salon in Rio de Janeiro, the Future is Being Born MARCH 25, 2003; RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL: Thirty-five people gather from distant corners of this giant country in a hotel in Copacabana; twenty-three of them are women, the faces shine an authentic prism of hues, some of them pale but not pallid, and most of them, mulatto to black. In a sharp contrast with the seats of power in this and other American nations, there is not a suit or tie to be seen in the room, nor a power skirt, nor a Rolex watch. This room reflects a more accurate photo of the majority. [continues 1737 words]
Celia Szterenfeld's "Pedagogy of Harm Reduction" Takes Root Finally, someone can answer my question of 15 months ago: What ever happened to that law to decriminalize drug use that was proposed by the administration of then-president of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso? The National Congress, in January 2002, amended (read: gutted) the legislation in mysterious ways, but no commercial press agency reported what happened to the bill that almost, but did not, make history. Here on the Narco News Team, we've been asking about that law for 15 months... and nobody knew, not even the activists or experts in Brazilian drug policy we interviewed knew... [continues 2258 words]
Documents Reveal Details of Casimiro's Murder Embassy Called Him a "Die-Hard," Special to The Narco News Bulletin Publisher's Note: Last December 6th, we arrived in Bolivia within hours of the assassination of coca growers union leader Casimiro Huanca. As we went to his town of Chimore in the Chapare region of the Amazon to investigate the crime, interview eyewitnesses and take photographic evidence, Bolivian government officials were lying to the press and the international community about what had occurred. [continues 1513 words]
Colombia's Narco-Candidate In 1997 and '98, alert US Customs agents in California seized three Colombia-bound ships laden with 50,000 kilos of potassium permanganate, a chemical necessary for the manufacture of cocaine. According to an August 3, 2001, document signed by then-DEA chief Donnie R. Marshall, the ships had originated in Hong Kong and were each destined for Medellin, Colombia, to deliver the chemical - whose legal uses include the manufacture of printed circuit boards - to a company called GMP Productos Quimicos, S.A. (GMP Chemical Products). Over the past decade, GMP has imported huge quantities of potassium permanganate, according to Marshall, and is suspected by Colombian law enforcement of leaking the chemical to coke producers. [continues 869 words]
Facts Reported by Narco News & Newsweek Explode in Colombian Presidential Debate Colombian Journalist Who Reported Uribe's Narco-History Threatened with Assassination Journalist Fernando Garavito: Now in Exile in the United States Uribe: "You have come here to smear my political career" Part II of a Narco News Investigative Report On March 19th, the day that Narco News and the March 25th issue of Newsweek published stories reporting the narco-history of Colombian presidential candidate Alvaro Uribe (See Narco-Candidate in Colombia, March 19, 2002 and "I Have Been Honorable," the Newsweek interview with Uribe, March 25, 2002), a presidential debate was held in Bogota with the five candidates and a panel of journalists. [continues 2127 words]
Uribe's Rise From Medellin: Precursor To A Narco-State His Campaign Manager, the DEA, and the Case of the 50,000 Kilos A Narco News Investigative Report In 1997 and 1998, alert U.S. Customs agents in California seized three suspicious Colombia-bound ships that, the agents discovered, were laden with 50,000 kilos of potassium permanganate, a key "precursor chemical" necessary for the manufacture of cocaine. According to a document signed by then-DEA chief Donnie R. Marshall on August 3, 2001, the ships were each destined for Medellin, Colombia, to a company called GMP Productos Quimicos, S. A. (GMP Chemical Products). [continues 6160 words]
Mexico City Many compared it to marching through a dream. After seven years under siege by 70,000 Mexican Army troops in the jungles and highlands of Chiapas, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) sent twenty-four delegates, including its pipe-smoking writer-spokesman Subcomandante Marcos, on a triumphant two-week motorcade that landed in Mexico City on March 11. "I don't believe that in any place, in any space in this world--and I have the memory of my own revolution twenty-six years ago--I don't remember a more moving moment than I lived yesterday," declared the septuagenarian Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago the next morning. [continues 1378 words]
After seven years in the Chiapas jungle, the Zapatistas are finally on the road to Mexico City " Therefore, according to this declaration of war, we give our military forces ... the following orders: First: Advance to the capital of the country, overcoming the Mexican Federal Army, protecting in our advance the civilian population and permitting the people in the liberated area the right to freely and democratically elect their own administrative authorities. " -- from the Zapatista Declaration of War December 31, 1993 Lacandon Jungle, Chiapas, Mexico [continues 3867 words]
In the '70s, US diplomat Jeffrey Davidow helped cover up the atrocities of Chile's Pinochet regime. Today he consorts with drug traffickers. Is this who we want representing US interests in Mexico? In Madrid, Spain, six time zones away from Chile, General Augusto Pinochet is standing trial for torture under international law. Pinochet came to power in a violent US-backed military coup; his military junta deposed and murdered elected president Salvador Allende in September 1973. But though he was a brutal dictator by any measure, he was only a cog in the wheel of Chilean oppression. US officials funded and protected his barbarity, which, critics of US foreign policy now take for granted, was planned not in his country, but in the United States. [continues 1015 words]
FEBRUARY 15, 1999: President William Clinton met today with Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo to negotiate better cooperation between their nations in the fight against drugs. Incredibly, the anti-narcotics summit was hosted by powerful Mexican banker Roberto Hernandez Ramirez, a man publicly accused of trafficking cocaine and laundering illicit drug money. But that story wasn't reported in the States, despite a controversy over Hernandez's alleged involvement in the drug trade that's raged on the Yucatan peninsula for two years. [continues 2777 words]
The untold story behind February's Yucatán summit redefines the enemy in the war on drugs If the facts of the story were made of cocaine powder, the entire White House press corps would have sneezed; the news was right under their noses. Any one of them could have written: MÉRIDA, MEXICO, FEBRUARY 15, 1999: US president William Clinton met today with Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo to negotiate better cooperation between their nations in the fight against drugs. Incredibly, the anti-narcotics summit was hosted by powerful Mexican banker Roberto Hernández Ramírez, a man publicly accused of trafficking cocaine and laundering illicit drug money. . . . [continues 3011 words]
An Open Letter To Senator John Kerry And Teresa Heinz JULY 26, 1997: from somewhere in the mountains of southeast Mexico Dear John and Teresa, Picture this. I am kneeling upon volcanic rocks, alongside a turquoise mountain stream. The breeze keeps the flies and bees away, softens the red blows of the pounding Mayan sun on my skin. A spotted lizard scampers by my guide, Francisco, age 10, a child -- get this -- with an attention span. Your so-called First World of television and computer games, the world of money-media-Sony-Disney-Microsoft, hasn't yet colonized his mind and spirit in the nefarious ways it has manufactured half-persons out of his counterparts in the North. He watches patiently, curiously, as this 37-year-old gringo tries to wash clothes in the river -- occasionally cracking a quiet smile at my obvious difficulty with the task. [continues 4230 words]
